There are two components to this answer, so hang in there. In our various digital courses, like the Digital Complete Nature Photo Course or any of our Adobe Photoshop Courses, I often cite examples where the optical 'truth' is a distortion of reality. For example, in a previous Tip of the Month I showed how apertures like f16, f22, and f32 actually degrade the quality of a macro image, although using f11 provides a very sharp image but with limited depth of field. If you use f11 on a 1:1 macro image, the depth of field is poor, and only a minute portion of your subject, assuming it is not a flat stamp but is 3 dimensional, will be in focus and sharp. At f22 or 32, the depth increases but the sharpness decreases. Either way, then, a great macro image, with edge-to-edge subject sharpness, is virtually impossible to achieve. However, the Helicon Focus Filter, a software package that combines multiple images, much as a panorama stitch program does, can combine the sharp portions of several images into one sharp composite. That's a digital interpretation, a multi-image composite, but it results in an image that is true, much as you'd see with your naked eye or through a magnifying lens. Question is, which is the reality? I'd say it is the composite.
You have the same issues with telephotos, where limited depth of field can reduce a background to a soft blur, which isolates the subject. This can be pleasing, but also untrue, especially if a background has interest but optically cannot be shown. Again, a composite can address this, and this is digital interpretation. We've been schooled that what we see through a lens, with the limitations of physics, is true, is it? I'd say no, although a digital composition might not be either.
But here's the Second Component ...
I just received my copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, whose RAW converter is absolutely incredible. The new version of Photoshop, CS3, will have a similar converter, and either one truly will change how we will or can look at photography. If you are familiar with the RAW converter of CS2, you have no idea how different, and how powerful, this new converter is. There are at least 38 different color tweaking controls, including 8 basic controls for exposure, 4 for adjust contrast with Curves, and 16 for either Hue or Saturation.
So what do all these controls do? A RAW image, in the past, represented a certain truth, because a RAW converter could only do so much. True, an underexposure or overexposure could be rescued, within limits, and color temperature, contrast, and saturation could be adjusted to taste in a rather global (or entire image) treatment. The new RAW is so much more powerful, and functions so specifically upon colors, brightnesses, and exposures, that it makes one wonder, what is reality? what is truth? The new RAW converter will redefine photography and how we look at the medium, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it is so different there will be new questions and controversies.
Lightroom looks terribly exciting, and I'm anxious to explore it in all its facets. With my Photoshop instructor, Rick Holt, we'll be offering an introduction to ADOBE LIGHTROOM July 22-28, 2007, and I'd urge anyone thinking about ordering Lightroom, or perplexed by this powerful program, take this course! It will change your life!
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